David Futrelle has the scoop.

The most common “critique” of the #mencallmethings hashtag that blew up on Twitter last week was that the women posting examples of misogynistic shit they got called online were making a big deal out of nothing.

...

It’s funny, then, that when MRAs find themselves described with less-than-flattering language they have a strange tendency to act like they’ve suddenly been struck with a case of the vapors. Witness the reaction of MRAs when someone calls them the “c-word.” No, not “cunt” – “creep.”

Source: Man Boobz

Now as it happens, I agree that calling a man a creep is a very, very rude thing. And implying that all men are creeps, as, say, the egregiously offensive Robert Jensen evidently routinely does is really, really degrading, demeaning, and very bad. (Not to mention, in Jensen anyway, extraordinarily self-hating.)

But, seriously, a little perspective here would be welcome. If you think someone is "thin skinned" or "can't take a joke" just because you called her a "cunt*" but when she turns around and calls you a "creep" you have a heavy metal breakdown? Irony. It's in the dictionary somewhere between "hypocrisy" and "perspective."

* or any subset of other gender-specific epithets Sady Doyle has conveniently cataloged in a single post.

Matthew Yglesias points out that contrary to the assertions of anti-abortion conservatives, sex-selective abortion is really mostly about sex discrimination politics (which conservatives like Ross Douthat are completely and unabashedly in favor of) and not very much about abortion at all.

Here's his thoroughly unescapable pitch:

This seems like an issue we can shed some light on with a not-very-outlandish thought experiment. According to both secular liberals and religious conservatives, a human spermatozoon is not a moral person entitled to our protection. To kill one is perfectly acceptable. And yet male fetuses and female fetuses (and ultimately male children and female children) are distinguished from each other according to whether or not their spermatozoon “father” carries an X chromosome or a Y chromosome. In principle, it’s not difficult to imagine scientists developing some kind of medication that a man could take that would specifically target one or the other kind. Take the “girl” pill and you become incapable of fathering male children. Take the “boy” pill and you become incapable of fathering female children.

On joint Douthatian and Yglesian principles, nobody’s being killed here. But I think that if we found out that use of the “boy” pill was extremely widespread, this might still legitimately worry us for three kinds of reasons. One is that widespread use of the boy pill would express the inegalitarian idea that men are more valuable than women. A second is that widespread use of the boy pill would reflect the existence of ongoing inequities in society that make it the case that a male child is more valuable than a female child. The third is that there are plausible reasons to believe that even a relatively small gender gap in the population could have problematic macro-scale consequences for society.

As it happens, sex-selective medical intervention overwhelmingly takes the form of abortions. But there are plenty of reasons you might be concerned about the phenomenon that don’t have to do with abortion specifically.

Source: Matthew Yglesias

Yup. Eliminate sex-selective abortion in much of the world and all you'll see is more people returning to their long-established sex-discriminating traditions of murdering infant daughters and "trying" again. Continue the status quo and you'll continue to see sex discrimination in the form of sex-selective abortions. Progressives will be queasy, and conservatives will obviously object that it's still abortion. Introduce sex-selecting contraception and all you do is create entirely humane and non-murderous sex discrimination. Progressives will remain queasy but conservatives will just gin up some other reason to concern-troll about abortion.

Obviously it will still be sex discrimination.

And so obviously the answer to sex-selection abortion is to work on the religious, traditional, and of course economic conditions that drive social discrimination against women, and thus family discrimination against girl children, in the first place.

, ,
Photo by Flickr user G.I. Folk. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Amanda Hess says

Peter Sprigg, a Family Research Council policy fellow who advises Montgomery County public schools on their sex ed curriculum, is encouraging gay kids to identify as straight in order to lower their risk of suicide. Because when gay kids identify as straight, only straight kids will kill themselves. Problem solved.

Source: TDB

What's, well, queer about Peter Sprigg's report is that it appears to take perfectly sound (if strategically incomplete) data, and even some sound intermediary conclusions, but then add a couple of agenda-driven definitions and turn it all into some really batshit-insane, dangerous recommendations.

Fact: Young people who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual do in fact have higher rates of suicide.

Fact: The sooner young people begin to self-identify publicly as gay, lesbian, or bisexual the greater their likelihood of committing sucide.

Fact: It's really is common for young people to feel "confused or uncertain" about their sexuality in adolescence.

Fact: Despite early uncertainty or confusion, by age 25 or so most people really have settled on a lifelong and generally far less flexible orientation

Fact: Of those people end up being exclusively heterosexual.

Oh, and

Fact: It actually really isn't a bad idea to wait to become sexually active till you're really sure what your identity and orientation is.  Even if (as Sprigg may have sock-puppeted into a quote) "you are sure you are heterosexual."

Facts, facts, facts, facts.  Most not even terribly objectionable since Sprigg got most of them from an article by Mark L. Hatzenbuehler in the respectable, peer-reviewed Pediatrics called The Social Environment and Suicide Attempts in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth.

But then he turns that into... what?  A recommendation that everybody identify as straight people who just like sex with their own sex.  In other words to be more like former Senator Larry Craig, former minister Ted Haggard, or even better, like the millions of other conservatives who stay in the closet and don't get caught.

But you know what?  There's at least one other fact that Sprigg pretty much necessarily omits...

Fact: The biggest difference between an out gay, lesbian, or bisexual and a closeted one is... a closeted gay, lesbian, or bisexual isn't subject to the kind of harassment, ostracism, and outright violence out ones are.  Not from their friends, not from their families, not from their teachers, not from other people their age, and so on.

Question that perpetually eludes Mr. Sprigg and his ilk: what do you suppose drives a lot of teenagers to suicide anyway?  Gee, I wonder if maybe not only feeling like you don't fit in but being told to your face by that "vast majority" who "will end up being exclusively heterosexual as adults?"  Particularly when egged on by... Mr. Sprigg and his ilk!

Naah, couldn't be.  It's gotta be them gay cooties.

---

What makes me particularly bitter about all this, by the way, is that when I was growing up I was regularly taunted, harassed, and beaten up for "being gay."  Even though, of course, I wasn't.

That said, as far as I know none of the boys and young men from my neighborhood who regularly beat the living shit out of me ever committed suicide.  Although, funny thing, at least two of them died of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s.

Actually did I just say "funny thing?"  It's really not very funny at all.  Because pretending, for instance, that you're really a straight guy who likes sex with other men, and by lacking credible, comprehensive sex education that Mr. Sprigg's coven deplores, makes it very difficult for men to learn the kind of sex safety practices that best minimize health risks to themselves, their partners, and, often, their spouses.

Robin Marty produces yet another demonstration of the complete lack of seriousness of the "pro-life" movement.  (Emphasis mine.)

I've read enough anti-choice literature now to know that if you are against abortion, at the moment of conception you now have a separate and unique individual.  That's how personhood works, and those are the words that doctors are expected to recite to you if you want to obtain an abortion in certain states.

But that only counts inside the clinic.  On the sidewalk, it's a different story, one clinic escort shares:

"Yesterday, the clinic had to call the police (again) because the protesters had (again) violated the terms of the injunction. There were four women on the sidewalk and together they had three kids in strollers. In my world, four plus three equals seven. When told they were violating the injunction, they argued that "four people" did not include children."

Source: RHRealityCheck.org

Oh, and speaking of failures to take "life begins at conception" seriously, I still haven't heard back from the smug "fetal harm" vigilanties and "fetal death" execution proponents about whether their draconian penalties intended to terrorize abortion providers would apply to those who harm fetuses via dispersal of pollutants, pesticides, or manufactured products that cause fetal defects and/or death.

I wasn't holding my breath, of course, because their opposition to abortion has nothing at all to do with concern either for fetuses or (as in the case of the clinic demonstrators who don't even see their own, born children ad people) considerations of personhood.

This is actually perfectly consistent once you get that their opposition to abortion is all about confining and controlling women: Since children are literally the "wages of sin" for that crowd, and since abortion in their eyes is a way for women to avoid their just deserts, thinking of their own children as people instead of punishment isn't really part of their frames of reference.

The mistake, I think, is believing them when they say they're "pro-life."  Their utter disregard for born children as human beings is one example.  A more telling one is their complete and utter indifference to miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, and so on, which generally only "stops a beating heart" of wanted children.